Both North Korea and South Korea claim to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea. This difference in views has led to animosity between the two states who are still technically at war with each other.
When the Korean war ended in 1953, the Korean peninsula was left in ruins. The north was a socialist state ruled by a fella called Kim Il-sung. Everything in the country was controlled by government. The inefficiencies of running a country this way were kept under wraps because North Korea enjoyed generous benefits from a close political and economic relationship with its big brother next door, the Soviet Union.
In perhaps one of the most interesting economic and social real-world experiments, a direct apples for apples comparison could be made between two rival political ideologies; a restricted socialist regime in the north and a pro-Western democracy style regime in the south. In the first few years after the war ended in 1953, in terms of standard of living North Korea was a toe ahead of its southern rival.
The relationship between North Korea and its main sponsor, the Soviet Union, began to sour as the Soviet Union had a new leader, Khrushchev, who started to pull back from the East due to different political views. The North Korean leader, Kim, continued on the same path while simultaneously purging anyone who disagreed with his direction for the state. Kim knew that to maintain control and prevent himself being thrown out of government for failing to progress the economy, he needed a strategy to ensure the longevity and survival of his family’s political power.
Kim introduced the idea of “Juche” as the state ideology. This movement is an official belief that the North Korean state must remain isolated from the rest of the world, while internally it needs to be led by a powerful and near-godlike leader. Conveniently, this near-godlike figure just so happened to be himself. Kim concocted a cocktail of Soviet Communism mixed together with the Japanese view of their Emperor as a quasi-religious figure, and fed it to everyone in his homeland for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The Korean peninsula continued in a state of stagnation for many years until the ‘70s came along. South Korea hopped onboard the boom-time-train and saw their economy skyrocket, leaving the North Korean economy in their wake.
The gap between the North and South Korean economy continued to widen until the ‘90s, when the situation for North Korea went from bad to worse.
The Iron Curtain fell off the curtain pole with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This meant the aid that was the life support machine from the Soviet Union to North Korea was switched off at the wall. Without food and aid coming into the country, this quickly accumulated into a complete collapse of the North Korean economy with famine ripping through its country.
While 1 in 10 people in the country starved to death, Kim knew his days as a leader were numbered after he ran his country into the ground. Drastic measures were needed to avoid disaster for himself, so Kimmy doubled down.
He introduced a new and improved state ideology called “Songun”, which means “military first”. This new system prioritized resources and services to the military above all else. Feeding his soldiers well with the little resources the country had, meant that while huge numbers of people continued to starve and suffer from malnutrition, Kim would avoid a military coup and hence remain in power.
This was justified by the fundamental belief that because they are the greatest nation in the world, they need a strong military to protect them and an even stronger leader to lead them. This aggressive militarism acted as a gross disillusionment to distract the ordinary citizen away from the injustices their backwards-thinking leader forced upon them. In short, Kim was a prick.
With this system in place, unless you spend the time and effort to correct the severe inefficiencies within your economy, you can never take your foot off the militarism gas-pedal. There always needs to be a threat on your country to continue manipulating the population into believing the horse-shite their leader says instead of seeing what’s really going on.
This is the hamster wheel situation the North Korean state is caught in.
The Korean people are now on their 3rd iteration of Kim as their leader. The first was Kim Il-sung, then there was Kim Jong-il and now we have Kim Jong-un. Each successive leader is a one-trick pony where they continually rely on progressing their military capabilities ahead of caring for its suffering citizens.
As the militarism hamster wheel began increasing its RPM by making technological advancements, initially there weren’t many geopolitical concerns because the state did not pose as much of a threat beyond its own borders. This allowed North Korea to continue down the path of hyper-militarization largely unnoticed until 2006, when they tested their first nuclear bomb.
This event completely altered the geopolitical calculus surrounding the state as now they posed as a major threat to the region. Despite international condemnation and North Korea claiming numerous times that their nuclear weapons program was shut down, the rogue state continued setting off increasingly powerful nuclear bombs in underground tests in the north east of the country. They have completed 6 tests to date, with the last test occurring in 2017 with a blast reportedly six times more powerful than the nuke dropped on Hiroshima.
Around this time of each year, between March and April, the US and South Korea hold their annual joint military exercises. This includes lots of running around, making noises and shooting at stuff. Inter-Korea tensions usually rise around this time of the year as a result of all this horseplay. However 2023 is a symbolically important year to the North Koreans as it marks the 75th anniversary (Sept 9th) of the formal splitting up of North and South Korea and also the 70th anniversary (July 27th) of the end of the Korean War.
As we approach these dates, there is potential for Kim to accelerate missile tests and potentially even a 7th nuclear missile test. Given the last nuclear weapon test was in 2017 for North Korea, since then it has been the longest sustained period of no nuclear tests since they first began testing in 2006. It could be argued a new nuclear blast is “overdue”.
If North Korea is to test another nuclear weapon, expect a stern response from the West, particularly the US, South Korea and Japan. However, these countries can growl and bark all they like, in reality there isn’t much they can do. North Korea is already under a plethora of sanctions so the scope for further sanctions is limited.
Sanctions are designed to cripple a country’s economy to bend them into submission for being naughty. The North Korean leaders’ primary concern is maintaining funding for their military, as part of the “Songun” ideology. A crippled economy and a further falloff in the standard of living for their regular citizens is no concern of theirs. To make matters worse, the regime has a well-established history of skirting around such ineffective sanctions to keep their military muscles pumped. Leaders in the regime are experts in engaging in criminal activity to stockpile cash.
Their tricks include producing drugs, cybercrime, producing counterfeit foreign currency, human trafficking, trading arms, trading endangered and rare animals and providing slave labour. When all of this is done at a national level, billions of dollars of cash becomes available.
The sneaky fuckers even pulled off the largest car heist in history, stealing 1,000 cars from the Swedish car maker Volvo back in the ‘70s. The North Korean government placed an order for the cars but once they were delivered, the North Korean lads hopped into their brand new shaggin’ wagons and tore off into the countryside, simply ignoring the invoice and never bothering to pay. The check might have got lost in the post, but it’s been 50 years since, so I reckon there’s more chance of a second coming of Christ than there is of the Swedes getting paid.
Because North Korea can supply pretty much anything you want, with a lack of a domestic market they need to source demand abroad. The North Korean regime has cultivated and developed relationships in the shadowy world of illicit, underground criminal organisations. They have fostered deep connections with China’s Triads and Japan’s Yakuza, who are some of the world’s most organized, well equipped and dangerous criminal syndicates. These criminal groups enable North Korea to tap into foreign markets, earning cash and sourcing technology in the process to continue bolstering its military.
North Korea is an immense risk to the region with a severe lack of any effective means of resolution. Lacking any carrot or stick to tempt North Korea into calming its intense militarism, there isn’t much world leaders can do unless they confront this geopolitical issue head on. However, attempting this could easily open up Pandora’s Box of Trouble. This is why each successive world leader has continued kicking the North Korean can down the road through a continuation of ineffective sanctions as any other means would be highly dangerous potentially leading to a catastrophic situation.
To understand the recent developments in this geopolitical situation and why the players involved are becoming increasingly nervous in handling this box of trouble, subscribe for Part 3.